Merry freakin' Christmas
Tomorrow morning I'm driving to my parents' house, where my brother has been living as well for a little over a year. I'm leaving Saturday afternoon to go to my sister's house so I can see her family. My mother started a feud with my sister over her choice of husband, and my sister hasn't been to my parents' house in ten years.
Last year at my parents' house there was no tree because my mother wanted a live one and my dad wouldn't pay what they wanted for one. The only presents were the ones I brought. I expect things to be the same this year. There was and is no money in that house because what little my brother brings in goes to his debts. My dad has to feed all three of them out of his social security.
My brother's house is being foreclosed soon. When he moved back in with my parents a year ago he said he was going to sell his house, and then he did nothing about it. Now he has a deadline to meet to get his stuff out of there before the bank takes over. My sister offered the help of her husband, but earlier in the week in a message to myself and my sister, my brother said to my sister he was sorry, but he just couldn't "make things happen."
I suspect this means that he can't deal with cleaning his house out.
Ho, ho, ho.
A friend of mine said in an e-mail that she understood. She said her Thanksgiving was like Jerry Springer.

The Deep Pool
I think folks were trying to work out before the next round of holiday indulgences because the pool has been really crowded recently when I got over there to swim on my lunch hour. You can get more people in the pool if everybody doubles up in the lanes, but recently it's been so crowded the pool got full even doing that.
In the aquatic center here, there's a big eight-lane racing pool which is only seven feet deep at its deepest. But there is also a diving well, which is 15-17 feet deep. This is also where they play water polo. I'd seen people swimming in the diving well but I never did it. The other day, the pool was so packed, I did it.
It was freaky to swim in a pool so deep. I never had before. I kept thinking about The Black Madonna, an early Clive Barker short story about a Thing that lives in the bottom of an old indoor pool. I also thought about the poster from Jaws. I thought about something coming up from the bottom to grab me like that shark is headed for that girl.
But that's just silly.